


Home is Just a Word

by twnkwlf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Babysitting, Canon Compliant, Christmas Fluff, Domestic, Fluff, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, Past Braeden/Derek Hale, Reunions, Single Parent Derek, Single Parent Stiles Stilinski, Single Parents, blended families - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-05-02 02:24:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5230316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twnkwlf/pseuds/twnkwlf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was 98% sure that Derek Hale was standing in the cereal aisle of the Oakland Wal-Mart, holding a little girl’s hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The In-Store Wal-Mart McDonalds

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a piece of garbage because I already have so many things on the go, but I had this URGE to write kid fic and also the holidays are coming, and I'm spewing out festive spirit. Here's all of that combined into one Sterek disaster. More to come!

Babies were fickle things.  

Though, Stiles supposed, his baby wasn’t so much a baby anymore. He was crossing into the realm of _toddler_ , a stage in life that had been so connoted with dread by all forms of media and mommy blogs on the internet that Stiles was holding onto his son’s youth with an iron grip. He didn’t want call Zach a toddler just yet, but nor did he want to be like one of those parents who still counted their kid’s age by the month even after their first birthday. He also refused to refer to the phenomenon as “the terrible twos,” but be that as it may, there was truth to the phrase.

Seeing as his son was two years old, and seeing as he was terrible.  

Case in point: Zachary Stilinski currently melting down in Stiles’ arms in the middle of the cereal aisle at Wal-Mart. It was a cliché he’d lived up to many times over the past few months.

It was his own fault, really. He should have gone to the Wal-Mart on the other side of town, the one _without_ the built-in McDonalds. Zachary got one look at the glowing golden arches on the way in and the rest was history.

Because no, Zach was not going to be receiving a happy meal at 3:00 PM on Christmas Eve, and no amount of crying was going to get him there. It seemed that once the kid realized it was a lost cause, he had nothing left to lose, and screaming over a moot point was worth it just to make Stiles suffer for the great injustice.

“I-I-I-I w-w-want nuggs, daddy,” he said with a wobbling chin. He could barely get the words out in between sobs. There was so much misery in that one sentence that Stiles’ heart did a funny twinge that tempted him to just throw in the towel.

“Zach, come on.”

“WANT ‘ _DONALDS_.” The last bit came out as a blood curdling scream, which built the resolve right back up.

“Nope. You know we’re having mac and cheese at home. Why are you crying? You love mac and cheese.”

“I love the- the- the  nuggs,” Zach wailed in reply. Stiles could empathize—he loved the nuggs too, but he’d vowed to keep McDonalds food as a strictly post-dentist or mid-road trip tradition and nothing else.                     

Stiles ignored the glares from a nearby store associate who was stocking granola bars as he threw a box of multigrain Cheerios into the basket. He only had a few things to get, since it was a low key Christmas this year. Melissa and the Sheriff were on a cruise until New Years, and Kira and Scott were at the in-laws for theirs. It would just be him and the boy, and a copy of _Jingle All the Way_ starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Melissa had sent him step-by-step instructions last week on how to roast a turkey properly. She broke it down so that even Zach could probably understand the process. He was here for cranberry sauce and Cheerios, and it was supposed to be just a quick little outing.

If only he could get out of this Wal-Mart before Zach went totally nuclear. He guessed he had about three more minutes.

“Dad, what’s wrong with him? Why is he crying?”

A little girl just a few cereal selections down from him made this remark and Stiles sighed. He hated how it looked, like his kid was a spoiled brat with no discipline, but the truth was, Zach was just starting to learn about rules and boundaries, and these tantrums were a part of the learning curve. It was hard to go from being a pitiful little baby whose only means of communicating a need is to scream, to being a well-mannered child that says please and thank you without a fuss.

“He’s just little. When kids are little, they don’t understand everything, so they cry when they can’t have their way,” said a very familiar voice, as if he were actualizing Stiles’ thoughts out loud.

Stiles whipped around to look at where the girl and her father were standing, and in that moment, his heart did another funny twinge thing that had nothing to do with parenting or any of that. Actually, it was a bit like seeing his life flash before his eyes, except it was a past life, one that he’d been working really hard on containing to nightmares these days.

He was 98% sure that Derek Hale was standing in the cereal aisle of the Oakland Wal-Mart, holding a little girl’s hand. He was 2% sure that this was a hallucination.

Funny enough, Zachary toned it down a bit in that moment, lowering his wails into hiccups and the occasional moan of agony. The Derek Hale apparition raised its head to look at them.

A long and uncomfortable silence fell, as if the entire store had evacuated and just left the four of them standing there next to the Lucky Charms. In that silence, Stiles considered all the things that made this moment possible. Derek looked older, probably because it had been about ten years since he’d seen him, since Mexico. He tried to remember—when was the last time Scott had even mentioned Derek? When was the last text message sent or received?

As he attempted to sift through the last decade, he felt an odd sense of déjà vu, like he was sixteen all over again and in the Reserve, locked in a stare-down with an enigmatic murder suspect.

“Whoa,” was all Stiles said at first.

“Hey, Stiles.”

“ _Hey, Stiles?”_ he parroted, completely aware that the polite thing to do would’ve been to say, “ _Hey Derek_ ,” but Stiles never had a great grip on his filter. “Sorry—it’s just…wow.”

“What are you—why are you here?” Derek asked, cocking his head a little to the left. Stiles knew from experience that it meant he was scenting out the air.

“I’m—I live here. What are _you_ doing here?”

“I live here, too.”

“You live in Oakland?” he gawked. It couldn’t be helped. “You’ve been MIA for like, ten years, and you live in Oakland, California?”

“I haven’t been MIA,” Derek said.

“Dad, can we _please_ get these,” another small voice spoke near them. It was at this moment that a figure walked up behind Derek and moved to stand beside him. She was another girl, older than the one holding Derek’s hand, maybe nine or ten, but she looked just like her sister. She was clutching a box of pop tarts close to her chest and looking up at Derek with a pained, begging expression. Both of the girls had pale brown skin, beautiful wild dark hair, and eyes like Derek’s, their brows set and full of emotion..

“It’s okay, Em,” Derek said. “Put it in the cart.”

“You have kids?” Stiles asked because it was the logical connection, but still amazed him. He shook himself. He realized that as shocked and strangely angry as he was, there were in fact three children in their presence, and he needed to be calm and nice for their sake.

But the truth was, he didn’t know whether he wanted to hug Derek or punch him in the face. Both would probably result in his own bodily harm, anyway.

“This is Emily,” Derek said, nodding to the older girl who was still holding onto the pop tarts.

“Hi, I’m Anna,” the younger girl said before her dad could introduce her. She was sweet as hell, polite, if not mildly concerned sounding. Both of Derek’s daughters seemed to be on the same level as their father, picking up on the tenseness of the exchange, and staring uncomfortably away from Stiles. He wondered if they were werewolves too, smelling the anxiety in the aisle.

Zachary, who Stiles had honestly forgotten about, said something that was too quiet to make out.

“Is he yours?” Derek asked.

“Yeah…um, this is Zach.”

“I’m hungry,” Zach offered. “We get din now?”

“Yeah, bud. Wait until we get home.”

Derek offered him a half a smile, which had been a strange thing to see back when the two of them knew each other, but now it seemed to transform Derek’s face into something else entirely, something Stiles had never encountered before. He laughed nervously, succumbing to the weirdness.

“I feel like we have a lot to talk about,” he offered.

“We do.”

“Dad, I’m hungry too,” Anna said suddenly, tugging on Derek’s hand a little. “Can we get French fries?”

Stiles decided then and there, that McDonalds food would become a staple only for post-dentist, mid-road trip, and estranged werewolf pack reunions.

Ten minutes and three happy meals later, all of them were seated at the back of the in-store restaurant. The girls wanted their own table, a few feet away, while Stiles and Derek kept a watchful eye. Zachary was as content as he could ever be, siting in Stiles’ lap and double fisting chicken nuggets. Stiles peered over his son’s head to meet eyes with Derek, who seemed pretty captivated by Zachary’s existence at the moment.

“He’s two,” Stiles said. “You don’t know his mom.”

“I couldn’t scent anyone else—“ Derek started, but he looked embarrassed to have mentioned it.  

“She has a teaching position in Oregon right now.” He thought about Lana, who was a good mom, but married to her major and trying to get her PhD. Stiles didn’t mind the way things worked out. She was with Zach a lot when he was born, but she always said that having a kid wouldn’t stop her from reaching her goals, and he didn’t condemn her. They had Skype and phone calls, and her parents babysat sometimes too. “We weren’t really together, just kind of happened. She gets him a week here or there.”

“Braeden’s the same. With the girls, I mean. You remember how her work is.”

“They look like her,” Stiles remarked. “From what I can remember anyway. You’re not with her anymore?”

Derek shook his head slightly. The subsequent few minutes felt like an interview, where everything was questions and answers. Slowly, Derek’s life after Beacon Hills seemed less like a mystery and more like a functional, normal progression toward middle age, intermittent with werewolf facts of life. Stiles learned that Emily was nine years old and Anna was five. They’d moved to Oakland right around the time Anna was born, after Derek sold the apartment building In Beacon Hills and invested in property here. Now he was a fulltime landlord who managed student housing, which gave him the freedom to stay home with the kids most of the time.

“We were in Brazil with Cora for a while before the move, but her pack isn’t as…liberal. They didn’t accept humans.”

“So Anna and Emily aren’t like you?”

Again, Derek shook his head. “Just Emily. Anna’s human.”  

“And you don’t have a pack anymore?”

“I’m fine with the kids,” Derek said, a little edge to his voice. “Family can be enough.”

Stiles didn’t have a doubt. He figured that if there was ever a time for Derek Hale to go omega, it would have sometime between losing his whole family in a fire and reverting back to adolescence in a Mexican catacomb. 

And truly, there was something kind of ridiculous in attaching danger to a man who, twenty minutes ago at the counter, had uttered the words “two grilled cheese happy meals with chocolate milk.”

Stiles filled him in on his own life, of course, but there wasn’t much to tell. Scott’s pack was still in Beacon Hills. Except for Lydia, who lived in Los Angeles now. He’d gone to Berkley after high school. He’d gotten a degree in pre-law, a minor in criminology, and now he was an investigator for a company who supplied PI’s to attorneys. A couple of drunken hook-ups had resulted in a baby, who he was raising with the help of day care and Starbucks espressos.

Most of the time, he was trying to forget that he lived in a world where demons and giant sentient magic trees existed. Derek’s presence kind of usurped that fantasy. He kept replaying an old memory as they talked—Derek’s heavy weight dragging him underwater, chlorine and fear in his mouth, the hiss of something horrible and a flash of green skin in his peripheral vision.

“So do we just go home and pretend we never ran into each other?” he asked when the kids had finished with the happy meals. The girls were locked in an argument over whose toy was the best, running over to the display case to look at the other happy meal toys available for the current Hello Kitty promotion. Derek’s eyebrows made a very familiar shape on his forehead.

“I’m not…” Derek started, sitting forward and placing his elbows on the table top. Stiles got a whiff of his scent with his own puny human senses—shampoo and leather. “I was never actively trying to ignore everyone from my past, alright?”

“You know, you—“ Stiles stared off for a second, watching Derek’s kids poke their fingers at the Hello Kitty figurines behind the case. “You didn’t come back after Mexico... that seems a bit like active ignorance to me.”

“Beacon Hills was Scott’s territory. It’s not—Scott would be fine without me. He w _as_ fine without me.” Derek shoved a hand through his hair. The conversation had veered suddenly into rough territory, out of nowhere, but with Derek here in front of him, Stiles couldn’t help but unearth a decade of repressed thoughts.  

“Do you even know what happened to us after Mexico? With Theo? The Dreads?” He wondered how differently things would have turned out if Derek had been there, fighting with them, like he always was. Would Stiles have done the things he’d done? Would the death count be marginalized at all?

“I had a baby, Stiles,” Derek said with his jaw clenched a little.

“I—“

“No.” Derek leaned in close, and Stiles pulled Zach more tightly against his chest when he did. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you would take Zach back there. Tell me you would raise your son in Beacon Hills and I’ll let it go.”

It felt like there was a french fry stuck in the back of Stiles’ throat. He looked down at Zach, who was making whooshing noises with the Hello Kitty figurine that he’d traded his Hot Wheels for with Emily, smashing the doll far too close to the ketchup for comfort. It wasn’t even a question—he always tried his best to make sure that Zach experienced as little of Beacon Hills as possible. He’d taken the boy home maybe a handful of times since he was born. A Thanksgiving once, another time for Scott’s 28th birthday. Another long, pregnant silence fell, but Derek’s gaze stayed sharp.

“I guess I’m a bit of a hypocrite, then,” he finally admitted.

“Look, can you just understand one thing?” Derek let his death glare relax a bit. Stiles noticed that the corners of his eyes were lined with small wrinkles. “After Mexico, I thought about coming back and…starting over with Scott. With the pack. I thought about it.”

“But you had a baby.”

Derek nodded and looked over toward his daughters, Anna on her knees in front of the toy case, giggling madly. Her sister stood above her with both hands spayed against the display, and she was saying something that made Anna laugh and laugh and laugh. They were beautiful. Just normal girls.

He didn’t need to say it—it was implicit. Beacon Hills took everything from Derek. Derek would never let it take them too.

As Zachary squirmed out of Stiles’ lap, Stiles blew a heavy sigh out, feeling the muscles in his abdomen release some of the tension. It had been a long half an hour.

“Is dredging up the past always this fun?” he asked with a nervous laugh.

“Only when you’re us.” The tension finally broke fully with Derek’s mouth quirking up just a little in the corner.

Zach made his wobbly way over to where the girls were, talking loudly in his scattered two-year old diction. He plopped down on the floor next to Anna to join their conversation, which looked riveting and much more fun than the one happening at the adult table.

“The girls like him,” Derek said.

“What, should we schedule a playdate?”

Derek shrugged like it wasn’t the most ridiculous notion Stiles had ever had.

Somewhere between wrangling up the children and making their way out to the overcrowded parking lot, Derek and Stiles exchanged phone numbers. Back in high school, Stiles had listed Derek’s number under the name “Weirdo”  and occasionally “Grumps,” but now he just wrote “Derek”—as if it the contact could be any innocuous, normal guy.

Zachary, much to Stiles’ chagrin, insisted on hugging and kissing Derek’s girls goodbye. He was a very affectionate boy most of the time, which was better than extreme shyness, Stiles supposed.

“On the cheek, Zach,” Stiles reminded, since they’d had a few incidents at Day Care. The kid was learning personal boundaries. Stiles had been the exact same way at his age.

Anna laughed hugely as Zach put a slobbery kiss on her cheek, while Emily opted for a high-five. She seemed more shy and reserved, more like Derek, while Stiles got the sense that Anna was more of a shit-disturber. They watched the girls climb into Derek’s SUV, a car that had considerably less muscle to it than the ones Derek used to drive before he was carting around little girls. Zach repeated the word “bye” about thirty-eight times while waving.

“So,” Stiles started. “This was surreal.”

Derek’s hand was paused on the door handle of his car, eyes looking down, and then back up at Stiles for an uncomfortable moment. “If you want to…go separate ways, forget about this whole thing—“

“It would be too weird to pretend you’re not here when you are.”

Derek nodded in agreement, even though he still looked uncomfortable and entirely out-of-place in the conversation. “I’ll see you around, then,” he said. 

“Yeah. See you around.” 

Stiles hitched his son up a bit higher on his hip while Derek stuck his hand out. The ensuing handshake might have looked like your typical bro exchange, with the heavy clasp and the fiddling of thumbs, but Stiles’ chest melted a bit at how genuine it felt. At the last minute, Zach thrust his hand out and shouted, “me too!” and then Derek, smiling, fist bumped his son goodbye.

Surreal wasn’t really the word to describe the afternoon. Stiles didn’t have a word for it.

***

“JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE, BELLS!”

Zachary sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells” perfectly, but the poor kid didn’t know the rest of the words. Eventually, it progressed into just singing the word “BELLS” over and over until Stiles was considering cancelling Christmas altogether. At least the kid was helping tidy up, since Stiles was also considering calling a housekeeping service at this point. It was late Christmas morning; Santa had been here, Zach had wreaked havoc, and the entire living room was overflowing with torn bits of wrapping paper, and not to mention the colossal amount of crap Zach accumulated this year. Zach was slowly collecting all the trash and putting it in a bag piece by piece, a laborious task that apparently needed a soundtrack.. After about five minutes, he finally switched to “Silent Night”, which was essentially just him repeating “silent night” thirty times to the tune.

Even though Stiles was feeling light headed from sleep deprivation, having stayed up until two in the morning to wrap everything and get it under the tree, and even though Zach had burst into his room at the ass crack of dawn this morning, it was still fucking adorable. Stiles finished making his second coffee in the kitchen and couldn’t help himself from padding out to the living room and scooping Zach up, attacking his face with big, cheesy smooches.

“I love you, love you, love you,” smooch, smooch, smooch. “Merry Christmas, kiddo.”

Zach giggle/screamed until Stiles gave him a lasting squeeze. He blew a quick raspberry on his neck and set him down next to the garbage.

“How’s the cleanup going?”

“You gon’ clean?” Zach asked. “Wanna play guitar now.” Scott and Kira had bought him one of those miniature electric guitars with buttons all along the frets. So far it was the only toy Zach cared about. That and his socks. He was wearing two pairs of new Star Wars socks on top of each other because he couldn’t decide if he wanted to wear the Yoda ones or the R2-D2s. What kind of kid loves getting socks for Christmas? Stiles’ kid.

“Okay, okay, you’ve done enough. I’ll take over, go play.”

As Zach busied himself with trying to press as many of the note buttons on the guitar at once, Stiles heaved a great sigh at the mess before him. Boxes and toys absolutely littered the place. Stiles himself had not bought much for Zach this year. He didn’t want to spoil the kid, or buy into the industrial Christmas complex, but the problem with having a werewolf pack on call is that all the werewolves therein felt the need to provide for the kid, since Zach was still the only baby that Scott’s pack had managed to produce so far.

Liam and Malia were the worst, for some reason. Liam kept sending them packages marked “FROM SANTA” for Zach’s benefit. That also meant that there was a considerable amount of bubble wrap and peanuts littering the floor along with the other crap. Malia and Lydia had arrived with a trunk full of the entire Toys-R-Us inventory on their last visit, which Stiles had to haul to the attic in order to hide. And then Scott, who already forced Stiles to accept a deposit for Zach’s college fund last Christmas, always managed to find the toys that he knew Zach would love.

And all of that wasn’t even including the grandparents. Lana’s moms had two other grandchildren, Zach’s cousins, and so their gifts were a little more on the practical and modest side, but Zach was a little weirdo and was probably more enthusiastic about new pyjamas and underwear than anything else. Melissa and the Sheriff planned to take Zach to Disneyland in a few months, since retirement age was approaching and trips to Florida were becoming more frequent.

So really, there wasn’t much left on the Earth to get Zach for Christmas. The Star Wars socks had been Stiles’ idea, at least. A small victory.

Taking another look at the room, Stiles pulled out his cell phone. He snapped a picture of the destruction and sent it as a mass text to the pack. At the last minute, he decided to add Derek as a recipient.

He started to clean up as he anxiously waited for a reply. Stiles wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to just text Derek something banal and normal like that. In high school, the only texts he ever sent the guy were various alarmed warnings and instructions like _BE AT SCHOOL NOW_ or _TWO DEAD AND ONE MISSING_. Maybe Derek was just following social protocol by saying “see you around” and what he really meant was “I acknowledge your existence and if we ever bump into each other again it won’t be a surprise, and we will wave politely, and never speak.”

Why did Stiles even care? In the long run, why did it matter? They weren’t friends. And if they ever were friends in high school, it was only out of necessity.

Stiles didn’t have a lot of friends in Oakland. The secretary at his office sometimes invited him out with her circles. He kept up with people on Facebook and Twitter. He had conversations with acquaintances. All of them were just placeholders, though. Stiles supposed it was hard to pretend that he was a normal guy when he wasn’t. Lydia, Scott, and the rest—all of them were trying to achieve normalcy, as much as they could get in their state of being, but none of them would ever really be normal. Stiles needed friends like them who understood that

Friends that understood why he spoke Japanese in his sleep sometimes, why there was a small arsenal of weapons in a locked case in the garage, why the ammunition for those guns were laced with black wolfsbane powder.

The pack was the real world and everything else was something Stiles had to play along with. How many times had his brain practically melted down when a co-worker brought up the newest werewolf movie in theatres?

Derek’s presence was an opportunity, Stiles thought. Maybe here in Oakland, in his normal little life, he could stop pretending to be this person who didn’t know some of the deepest secrets against humanity. For a few hours of the week, at least.

Derek texted back about fifteen minutes later—a picture as well. It must have been Derek’s living room. The two girls sat in their pyjamas on a sleek dark hardwood floor, massive fuzzy slippers on their feet. Emily had a book spread out on her lap with a stack beside her, while Anna was a flurry of motion, holding some toy that Stiles couldn’t make out. Around them, the entire floor was a similar scene to Stiles’ living room—wrapping paper and empty packages everywhere. Derek captioned the photo: _Courtesy of Aunt Cora._

He texted back: _do you want to split on a storage unit to house all of this crap?_

Derek’s reply was fast. _We could carpool to Goodwill._

On an impulse, Stiles decided he was sick of texting, and hit the dial button on Derek’s name. As the tone rang twice, he tried to calm the anxious knots eating away at his stomach. There was no logical reason to feel anxious, but Stiles couldn’t swallow the odd sense of urgency that pressed up against his throat.

When Derek answered, he jumped into a tangent.

“I was thinking—“ he began, shaking the trash bag to make room for the rest of the scrap paper. “We could totally capitalize on this ridiculous werewolf urge to provide, you know? Malia alone probably sent Zach at least a thousand bucks in Lego and action figures.”

“You mean that you want to sell all your son’s Christmas gifts?” Derek replied. His voice sounded much different over the phone, when it was right in Stiles’ ear.

“Not _all_ of them, just the ones he doesn’t show a particular interest in. Come on, Cora probably had, like, three UPS trucks lined up outside your house, didn’t she?”

“Two UPS trucks.”

“It is a werewolf thing, right? All the gifts? It’s the modern day equivalent of leaving us dead birds and bunnies on our doorstep.”

“It’s…” Derek started, taking a deep breath. “It’s difficult for…long distance packs. I think Cora’s trying to compensate. Scott’s pack is doing the same for you.”  

Stiles finished stuffing the last bit of wrapping paper into the bag and tied it off. Double checking that Zach was still peacefully hammering away on the guitar, he held the phone between his ear and shoulder and went to take out the trash.

“Shit,” he said, waving to his next door neighbor outside, who was smoking a cigarette on his front porch, wearing a flannel robe and a Santa hat. “I only sent them all an E-Card and an Amazon gift certificate, so I guess I’m undercompensating.”

“You’re a single parent,” Derek said. “I’m sure they understand that.”

“Maybe they could send me a full time nanny next year.”

A few moments passed with nothing but silence over the line. Stiles’ head spun with a thousand different things to say—small talk, serious talk, and supernatural talk. He thought it might be easier, less awkward to sit in silence face-to-face than breathing over the phone like this. Stiles went back to the warmth of his living room, where Zach was sitting in the same spot. There was a turkey waiting to be cooked in the kitchen and a relatively empty day ahead of him.

“I’m gonna go out on a limb here,” Stiles said, finally breaking the awkward silence. “And invite you to Christmas dinner.”

“Don’t you have plans?”

“Don’t you?”

Derek huffed a bit, but Stiles couldn’t tell if it was in frustration or amusement. “Not this year.”

“Well, neither do me and Zach. We have a whole turkey. And there’s eggnog.”

“Eggnog is disgusting.”

“Not if you spike it with spiced rum. Come on, it’s festive.”

Derek huffed again, and this time Stiles could tell it was with supressed laughter. “Alright. Fine. What’s your address?”

***

A few hours later, Derek’s SUV pulled up to the curb outside Stiles’ house. Stiles lived closer to downtown, even though the cost was higher. He couldn’t stand subdivisions and he liked being centralized near the heart of the place. Beacon Hills was always so spread out from neighborhood to neighborhood, disjointed between patches of forestry and empty fields. He didn’t care for isolation and boxy houses with yards fenced in and shut off. He liked his weird neighbors, even if they threw cigarette butts on the small bit of grass in front of his house.

He saw Emily first. She jumped out of the car and onto the lawn with that same stack of books precariously balanced in her arms. Derek appeared from the back with Anna on his hip. She had what looked like a Gameboy in her hands, and didn’t bother to look up even when they approached the front door.

“Nice place,” Derek said as he climbed the front steps.

“It’s alright.”

The situation was a strange, yes, but Stiles didn’t feel like it was forced. Derek didn’t feel like a stranger in his home either, which surprised him. He thought ten years of distance would have some kind of effect like that. The girls’ presence helped, he guessed.

Emily kicked off her shoes and made a beeline for Zach, who was folding and re-folding the clothes he got from Lana’s parents. When Zach realized the girls were there, he jumped up and almost slipped trying to hug them both at the same time. It was a short lived greeting because all three kids immediately burst into descriptions of what they got for Christmas. Anna let Zach hold the Gameboy while Emily started to look through all of the toys that Zach was wildly gesturing toward. Noise filled the room instantly and it was a wonderful, rare kind of sound to be heard in the Stilinski house.

“Well,” Stiles said, turning to Derek, who was hanging the girl’s coats up in the closet. “I don’t think we’ll have to entertain them very much.”

“You didn’t have to invite us over, you know,” Derek said, looking down at his shoes. “It’s not like—“

“Shut up and help me with this turkey.”

Derek shut up and followed Stiles to the kitchen.

The next few hours were both quiet and loud. Derek and Stiles didn’t talk a lot, just shared the space in the kitchen and cooked. Derek had a lot of insight into turkey roasting that Stiles highly valued. He listened to him explain when to baste and how to make sure the stuffing didn’t get soggy, which were things he would never picture Derek Hale saying to him before now. As they cooked, the kids started playing some kind of game that involved Anna hiding behind the couch while Zach and Emily tried to catch her popping her head up. For a while, there was only laughter and high pitched squealing from the living room. At some point though, the squealing turned into full on screaming. One of the girls erupted into sobs—Anna accusing her sister of cheating at whatever made up game they’d been at. Derek, who was chopping celery while Stiles washed the dishes, immediately moved into the living room.

He bent low next to Anna and took her hand.

“Do you think it’s a good idea to keep playing this game?” he asked. “Games are supposed to be fun.”

“She cheated, though!”

“I didn’t cheat! She’s being a baby.” Emily said with tight, crossed arms. She was full of sass, rolling her eyes when her dad wasn't looking. 

“Shut up!” Anna balled her fists up and cried into them, turning her back away from her sister. Zachary wasn’t paying much attention to the fight, just playing with one of his R2-D2 socks and singing to himself. He was a pacifist with everything except McDonalds.

“Okay,” Derek interjected. “No more of this game.”

This made Anna cry harder and babble about how unfair everything was. Stiles leaned against the threshold into the living room, watching Derek’s parenting skills at work. He seemed to be letting Emily cry it out and throw her fit, but when Anna started muttering about how stupid Emily was, he stopped her with a stern, intimidating voice.

“We don’t call people names, Anna.”

Stiles decided to step in.

“You know what? We need decorations to hang up for dinner. Why don’t we make some?”

Derek looked up at Stiles as if to give a silent _thank you_ when Anna’s sobs quieted and she started to show interest.

With the addition of macaroni, glitter, and glue, the girls’ spirits were lifted exponentially. Anna’s eyes were puffy and cried out as she drew her version of a reindeer, giggling and talking as though she hadn’t been in the middle of a breakdown five minutes ago. It was wild how basic kid’s emotions could be sometimes. Two ends of the spectrum, sadness and hurt and anger felt so viscerally, but they always bounced back to this, to happiness and carefreeness. Stiles wished the same were true for himself. These days, he was in a grey area—content, but not quite happy.

The kids made a mess of the dining room table, markers rolling to the floor and bits of construction paper forgotten as they ripped out new pages from the book.  Derek and Stiles retreated to the living room.

“Sorry about that,” Derek started, sounding embarrassed. “She’s going through a sibling rivalry phase.”

“I don’t think that’s a phase, buddy,” Stiles said, laughing. “That’s just siblings.”

“I’m just lucky Anna’s not a werewolf. There would be blood.”

“Does Emily ever lose control? I mean, she’s probably the most relaxed kid I’ve ever encountered.”

Derek picked up a few of Emily’s books, which were spread out across the floor and forgotten in all the commotion. He moved to join Stiles on the couch after a few moments, leaning forward onto his knees.

“Emily and me…we do a lot of work. Training, I guess you would call it. The things I was taught at her age. It’s easier when you’re a born wolf because you have the emotion, the ability to trigger the shift from so young, so it’s just a matter of working on her temperament, but…”

“But?”

“She needs a lot of attention, and Anna gets jealous.”

Stiles looked into the dining room to where Zach was spitting out a piece of raw macaroni. “Zach! The macaroni goes on the paper, not in your mouth!” he quickly berated. Then he turned back to Derek, who had a slight corner-mouth smile like he’d seen yesterday. “You’re really good with them, you know.”

He shrugged and made a soft, noncommittal sound.

“No really,” Stiles continued. “It’s weird. In high school… I don’t think I would have ever pictured you being so…calm.”

“I wasn’t the same person back then.”

 Stiles watched Derek’s face—it was a placid and faraway. He didn’t want that. He wanted them to stay in the moment, with the smell of roast turkey and sage, and the overlapping babble coming from the kids. The soft sound of the Michael Buble Christmas album playing over from the kitchen speaker. They didn’t need to go back ten years to be in each other’s space—that much was clear. “Look, let’s just…forget it. A decade is a long time.”

Derek turned his head, met Stiles’ eyes while he scratched at the stubble on his cheek. After a second, he nodded in agreement.

The rest of the night was smooth and as festive as it ever got at Stiles’ house. He stuck the kids’ artwork on the fridge with alphabet magnets. Emily stopped to spell her name with them, and Anna got mildly huffy that there was only one N magnet, misspelling her name as ANA on the fridge above the macaroni-glitter Santa Clause recreation.

They ate in front of the television, kids on the floor with their plates, probably making even more of a mess, but Stiles didn’t mind. They watched _Jingle all the Way_ and then _A Christmas Story_ , which made Derek actually laugh a few times at the classic parts (the sexy lamp in particular). The kids tore open a box of chocolates that Stiles had received as a gift from a co-worker. They bit into all of them and threw away the ones that were coffee flavored or dark chocolate, and Derek chastised them, but Stiles didn’t care much.

Later, he told Derek a few stories about some of his past investigations, and how shady Oakland could be when you looked beyond the veneer. Derek told the story of how a few of his tenants turned out to be involved in some kind of sketchy prostitution ring a few years back.

“It still smells weird in there, no matter how many different tenants come and go.”

“The downside of werewolf senses, I guess. Can you even use a public bathroom?”

Derek lifted an eyebrow at him and muttered that he’d rather piss outside.

As they watched the last bit of the movie, Zach crawled up to Stiles’ legs and lifted his arms, eyelids half closed. Wordlessly, Stiles picked him up and set him across his lap. The kid curled up into the crook of Stiles’ arm and leaned his head onto his chest, allowing Stiles to cart his fingers through his hair. The blue glow of the TV dazed them both into a relaxed, almost asleep state. Stiles caught Derek staring at them after a few minutes.

“You’re good with him too,” Derek said quietly.

“He’s not so much trouble. I would have thought any kid I managed to produce would be bouncing off the walls, but his attention span is better than mine, probably.”

“He’s a good kid.”

Stiles thought the same about Derek’s girls.

He also thought that this was the missing link. This was the thing that tied them together, that made it natural to be sitting next to each other on this couch. It was their kids. If Stiles had run into Derek in a Wal-Mart three years ago instead of yesterday, would he have invited the guy over? Would they be having any sort of conversation at all? Stiles and Derek always occupied separate worlds, until they didn’t, until Scott was bitten. After that, the world was mayhem and they shared it.

Now the world was macaroni art and temper tantrums. It was hand-holding and discipline, early morning Disney Channel and having responsibility over a living thing in a way that they’d never been allowed. Derek’s kids weren’t betas in his pack. Stiles’ kid wasn’t a temporary inconvenience that he had to fit into a chalked- full schedule. The kids weren’t a crisis. It was still mayhem, but it wasn’t evil. It was actually kind of beautiful. It was good.

Derek left with Anna asleep in his arms, one hand holding Emily, who allowed Zach to kiss her goodbye this time. Stiles carried the toys and books they’d brought with them, depositing them in the back seat with the booster seats.

When they kids were bucked in, Derek turned back to face Stiles on the street. He was lit in amber from the streetlight overhead. The shadows and highlights on his face kept his expression hidden. Stiles stepped forward a little, rocking on his heels.

“Thank you,” Derek said. “It was a good Christmas.”

Stiles didn’t want to say that it had been the best Christmas he’d had in a long time. “It was.”

Derek put a warm hand on his shoulder. They were about the same height, but it made Stiles feel marginally smaller. Not in a bad way. His chest throbbed with a distant feeling, like an echo bouncing off a deep cave wall inside. It was the first time he’d felt that in a while, and he didn’t know what it meant.

“Would it be weird if I—“ he started, but Derek read his mind and cut him off by pulling him forward into a hug. It was a tight, quick embrace of limbs that pushed all the air in Stiles’ lungs out in one gust.

“If you—“ Derek began, his voice thick and tickling against Stiles’ temple. “If you need anything, I mean it. Anything…”

“Can I take you up on that playdate?” Stiles laughed, feeling giddy in the middle.

Derek pulled back, another amused expression on his face, playing with his eyes and mouth. “Thursday?”

“Thursday.”

Stiles stepped back, shoving his hands in his pockets. He watched Derek get into the car and drive slowly away, and even after he’d turned at the end of the street, Stiles kept standing there. He had to go inside and put Zach to bed, start clearing up the new messes, but he wanted to stand there for a while longer and feel whatever it was that he was feeling. Maybe it was the grey area of his emotions finally changing into something real, a real shade. Everything around him felt bright and blinding like whiteness.

It was unnerving. It was amazing.


	2. Luna

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow i'm trash at writing fic. i'm an unmotivated mess and i'm sorry this took so long, but i really want to get this story out and completed so thanks for bearing w me

“I saw Derek.”

At first, Scott didn’t react at all to that information. Granted, they’d been sitting on Skype together for the last hour, mostly going on with their usual internet activities while enjoying each other’s digital company in comfortable silence. Stiles let it slip out randomly, after brainstorming about twenty different ways to organically work Derek Hale into their usual weekly Skype chats and coming up with nothing.

After a few moments of silence, he began to wonder if Scott had put Skype on mute, but it was Kira who actually responded first. He could see her at the counter behind Scott, washing a dish and scratching at her head. She turned around and squinted at the camera of Scott’s laptop, coming forward and hovering over Scott’s shoulder.

“Wait--- you saw _Derek_ Derek?” she asked. “Derek Hale?”

 “What?” Scott abruptly clued into the discussion and whipped his head around to look up at Kira. “What are you talking about?” he said.  Stiles heard the rapid blip of the volume button being turned up on Scott’s laptop and the frantic clicking of Scott putting Stiles on full screen mode as he turned his attention back to Skype.  

“I ran into Derek last week.”

“What the hell?” Scott shook his head, squinting. “In Oakland?”

“I know. It’s weird right? He lives here now.”

Kira, who was still hovering over Scott’s shoulder, let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh.

“Why does he live in Oakland?” Scott looked a bit like he was thinking out loud, scrunching his nose and probably sorting through the teenage memories of their time spent in Derek’s steely presence.

“A completely normal reason, apparently. He flips houses and manages a bunch of buildings. I always pictured him living in some… cabin in the middle of nowhere Canada or something,” he added. “Did you know he had kids with Braeden?”

Scott rubbed a hand over his mouth and beard, leaning back in the chair and glancing up at Kira. “I haven’t talked to him since…I don’t even remember, man. He has kids? How many kids?”

“Two girls, dude. I think Zach is in love with them.”

“So you’ve, what? Been hanging out with Derek?” Scott sounded skeptical, but amused. Stiles couldn’t blame him. Talking about Derek’s new presence in Stiles’ life was like recounting a weird-ass dream.

He scoffed. “Isn’t there a more sophisticated way to describe it? He’s kind of a friend, I guess. Our kids are kind of friends.”

“You’ve been getting _friendly_ with Derek?” Kira offered, laughter under her breath.

“Okay, hanging out sounds better than that, Jesus.” Stiles shook his head and dropped his chin into his hand, shrugging because there was an implicit suggestion in all of this and he was burning through the last shreds of his mental energy trying to ignore it. Still, his thoughts assaulted him with images of Christmas night, and that warm hug out on the cold street. He swallowed down a wave of anxious excitement for their scheduled playdate, realizing that they would probably hug goodbye again, if it was a thing, and realizing how weird it was to be excited about that. He wasn’t excited about hugging anyone else.

Scott sighed a bit and leaned forward on his elbows until the light from the computer screen lit up his face in blue. “I kind of feel like an asshole, I mean…so much happened after he left town it’s like—“

“Like we forgot he existed?” Stiles finished. Scott nodded and the corners of his mouth turned down. “Well, he still does.”

“Tell him we say hi,” Kira said while resting her chin on Scott’s shoulder. “Tell him to call us or something.”

“Yeah…” He wondered if Derek would be interested in calling Scott and Kira. He wondered if there was ever a future where the four of them, and Liam, and Lydia, and Malia, would be in the same room again. Would they have a meal together or drink beer? A casual reunion? The idea seemed too cavalier to be real. There was a sense of movement, of progress inside the tenuous little connection they’d made, but Stiles didn’t know where the tracks were leading. “I’ll tell him.”

***

Thursday sprang fast. He pulled up to the daycare where Zach spent most of his days playing house, and memorizing his three favorite picture books, and napping in commune with ten other kids on the same purple mat every day, which he had declared **_his_** _forever_. The sleeping mat was the source of many heated arguments and temper tantrums with the other toddlers who dared try claim it at nap time. They were just starting with the “sharing is caring” ideology, but it was slow going according to the day care workers.

Zach had some crayon drawings with him when Stiles picked him up, running over with his little backpack swinging in one hand. Stiles hoisted him up to his hip and accepted the drawings with a big kiss on the cheek.

“What’d you draw today, kiddo?”

“Anna and Em,” he said, sounding uncharacteristically shy. “And me.”

The picture was a waxy, scribbly rendition of three vaguely humanoid shapes with tons of black squiggles to represent hair, presumably. Above them, the day care worker had helped Zach scribe all their names in much finer, adult penmanship. There was a yellow sun, as always, etched in the corner of the paper. Kids always put the sun in their drawings.

“This is awesome,” he told his son, a surge of pride running warm through him. “Do you want to give this picture to Anna and Emily today?”

Zach stuck his tongue out in deep thought before shaking his head and asking if they could put it on the refrigerator, stumbling on the word. Stiles bumped his own forehead against the kid’s and folded the page up to hang later. They were off to meet Derek at an unfamiliar park across town, and Stiles wanted to take his time driving there so that he could chill the fuck out and arrive without reeking of anxiety.

***

Derek had two dogs. One was a collie/shepherd with big front paws and a lolling tongue named Poe and the other was a smaller, indiscernible mix of many breeds who never stopped wagging her tail. The girls called her Luna, to which Stiles turned to Derek and lifted a judging eyebrow.

‘Luna? You can’t be serious.”

“They named her after the Harry Potter character, not the moon,” Derek said while unclipping her leash and letting her gallop toward the kids, all of whom were now running in circles around the swing set, chasing Poe.

The park was mostly empty except for a pair of walking mothers with strollers who circled the pavement that surrounded the soccer field. Derek and Stiles were left to their own devices once the dog chase was in full swing, leaving a lingering silence as the kids ran further and further down the large field. They stood side by side on the edge of the playground, looking out at the game of tag.

“So I, uh,” Stiles began. “I told Kira and Scott about you, you know, being here.”

Derek spared him a tiny glance, but for the most part, kept his eyes on the children who were now too far away for Stiles to hear their laughter. He wasn’t afraid that they would disappear onto the biker’s path that led out to the surrounding neighborhoods, or that they would veer away up onto the hill that led to the road. Derek’s senses made him a watchful guardian, which was a familiar sensation in some resonant way.

“I mean, I hope that’s okay,” he quickly added.

“It’s okay.” Derek crossed his arms. “I’ve been thinking about…getting back in touch lately.”

“Kira says _hi,_ for what it’s worth.”

Derek cracked a short, one sided smile as though he was actually considering its worth.

“Would you ever consider the pack life again?” he asked. “The whole gang back together, all that.”

Derek’s cast his eyes down at his feet for a second before straightening up. Stiles just continued to poke the fire. His inability to bite his tongue would always be a shortcoming. “Because Scott would take you guys with open arms and, like, welcome gifts, you know that.”

Derek still said nothing.

“I mean, tell me it hasn’t crossed your mind at least. He’s the North American true alpha…he pretty much gets fan mail on a daily basis. People are always trying to join up. He’d pick you over all of them in a second.”

“It would be too much change,” Derek said finally.

“What has to change?” Stiles pivoted to look at Derek head on, pointing at their feet. “Hear me out, okay? I’m standing in the exact same spot as you right now. Here, in Oakland, California. A human and a werewolf, and the _human_ is the one with the pack? It seems to me like you could have the exact same thing.”

“You don’t get it,” Derek said with frustration on the edge of his voice.

“What don’t I get?” Stiles bit back the urge to roll his eyes. “That you’re exposed without a pack? That you have no protection? That there’s still hunter activity up North?”

 “I know that.”

“Okay, so what’s the problem?”

“It would mean going back to Beacon Hills. For the girls to meet Scott and the rest, to live near him. You can’t just form new pack bonds with a few texts and phone calls. It would mean going back.”

Stiles backed off and turned back to face the soccer field. The kids and the dogs were running in their direction now, zig zagging and tripping, and getting back up with grass stains, and spinning in circles. The momentary lapse of anger subsided with a bit of sadness at the edge. This was a conversation that was demanded to be had, so it seemed. Beacon Hills was the elephant in the room, always.

“Sorry I brought it up.”

Derek inhaled deeply like his own version of a sigh. Stiles watched the muscles in his jaw tense and relax, and after a moment, Derek quietly said, “I don’t know why you’re so concerned about our pack.” He said _pack_ as though it was synonymous with _family,_ but Stiles knew that it wasn’t the same.

“Because you don’t have an alpha. I thought that was the whole point of _being_ a werewolf.”

Derek looked at Stiles in the eyes finally, maybe for the first time since they’d pulled into the parking lot. He looked sad, and Stiles was guilty for getting them into this.

“It is,” Derek said softly. “It is the whole point.”

He was quiet for a long time after that. The mood wasn’t sour, but it was serious. It was probably impossible to get through a single interaction with Derek that didn’t amount to some kind of deep, important revelation.

The kids ran past them as the two dogs made a beeline for a squirrel, totally oblivious to their parents’ little confliction. Derek turned around to watch the girls as they headed to the ladders and slides of the play equipment and said, “It’s not something I haven’t thought about. I know they need a pack, a real one. I told you…I’ve been thinking about getting in touch with Scott.”

“You know he’d find a way,” Stiles said, impulsively reaching out to touch Derek’s arm. “He’d find a way to make it easier for you.”

Derek leaned into his touch just slightly, but he didn’t get to respond because there was a sudden, sobering cry that cut across the park. They both jumped forward. One of the girls had screamed and now there was a loud, elongated wail coming from what sounded like Anna.

 And underneath that, Stiles heard a low growl.

“Em,” Derek said on the edge of his breath. They bounded toward the playset, which was massive construction, a ladder leading up to a colorful house, connecting to a network of slides. The kids were underneath it, where there was just enough room for Anna to stand. Anna wasn’t standing, though. She was on her side, face crumpled while she wailed with a powerful set of lungs. Emily was in the far corner, the most shadowy bit of the little nook. Two beta-amber eyes burned like a warning sign, and she was softly huffing, chest rising and falling quickly. She had claws out.

Zachary looked like he was going to cry, but Stiles quickly picked him up and set him safely away from the commotion, over to where Poe and Luna were rolling in the wood chips. The dogs would distract him enough.

“Emily,” he heard Derek say softly. “Em, just breathe.”

Stiles told Zach to stay put while he made his way over to the playset again, checking behind his shoulder to see if anyone was nearby or listening in. There was a half-shifted werewolf child in the middle of the park and it stuck a very ancient chord of anxiety within Stiles, one dating back to his junior year of high school. A few middle school kids were fucking around on the swing set and a group of runners had stopped by the track to stretch, so the coast was not clear and this could all go south very fast. Stiles bent down to where Anna was still crying while he watched Derek slowly approach Emily.

“Breathe, baby, it’s okay,” Derek said, and he took three deep inhales, bending down on his knee to reach Emily’s eye level.

“She- sh- she scratched me,” Anna sobbed, barely audible. Stiles gently turned her wrist over and saw that shallow claw marks had torn through her blue sweater, cutting her forearm enough to bleed, but not seriously.

“I’ve got a first aid kit in the car, why don’t I take her out of here?” he said, already gently pulling Anna up into his arms. The poor kid looked devastated. Derek spared him a quick glance, nodding.

He set Anna on one hip and collected Zach on the other. Anna continued to cry the whole walk to the car, resting her head on his shoulder in a sweet, exhausted way. He opened up the trunk and sat both kids on the edge.

“Just hang tight, sweetie,” he told her, rolling up her torn sleeve. She hiccupped and rubbed her eyes. “We’re gonna get this all cleaned up.”

Zach was very helpful handing Stiles various wipes and gauze pads, though he got distracted by the Batman bandages and opted to stop the nursing duties in favor of sticking the Robin ones all over his pants. Anna giggled when Stiles got three of them stuck to his fingers trying to peel them off, but she cried even harder when he wiped her wound with antiseptic. In the end, she was okay with a juice box and a kiss from Zach on the freshly bandaged boo-boo.

“You alright, kiddo?”

Her chin wobbled and two fat tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’m not supposed to make Emily get mad and I did and I’m gonna get in trouble.”

He didn’t know what to say because he didn’t know the protocol. He couldn’t imagine that Derek would hold it against Anna for making Emily shift, but they were a special family with special circumstances. Anna was so young, though, and no matter what werewolf DNA was inside the Hales, these kids were like any other sisters. Fighting was a part of the mandate. He smoothed Anna’s curls back, then got a tissue and made her blow her runny nose, wiped up her tears until he heard someone approaching behind him.

Derek had Emily by the hand, who was also crying with her face crumpled. She came forward and climbed into the trunk next to Anna, who had a deep frown dragging on her mouth. Emily cried even harder and hugged her sister, and the two of them bawled and shouted apologies at each other for a while. Even Zach chimed in with a few “I’m sorry’s” just to feel included.

Stiles looked at Derek and shook his head in disbelief.

“They were fighting over who got to go first on the slide,” Derek said and dragged a hand through his hair. “And the full moon is coming.”

“Is this a regular occurrence?”

“Em has shifted in arguments, but…she’s never cut Anna before. I think her claws are starting to harden. They’re soft when the kids are younger.”

“So you’re going to have to deal with werewolf puberty on top of actual puberty?”

Derek rolled his eyes and then paused, watching Emily plant kiss after kiss on Anna’s bandaged arm. It was so damn sad and sweet that Stiles had to avert his eyes.

“Thanks for taking care of her,” he told Stiles. “I don’t know how I would have been able to calm Em down if you weren’t here. Not with both of them…”

“Where else would I be?” And he meant it. There was nowhere else in Oakland where Stiles wanted to be besides here, and that thought scared him, but not as much as it made him feel at peace. It was becoming an easy thing—playdates and evening texts, knowing that there was someone near him who he could call or see, and just exist with in a real way.

When the girls calmed down and Derek got them buckled into the SUV, he asked Stiles if he wanted to come over for dinner, since the park was a bit of a failure.

They followed Derek’s car to a nice neighborhood bordering on the suburbs. The houses were all older, taller, and narrower than the boxy rows of model homes that laid beyond the street. Stiles parked on the side of the road while Derek pulled into a driveway in front of a red brick home, more Victorian looking than the others, with an attic peak and a wide turret of windows on the second level. It reminded him of the old Hale property, only while the estate had been an ominous, foreboding manor on the edge of the reserve, this place oozed benevolence. There were children’s gardening tools littering the lawn in front of an overgrown spread of weeds and mismatched flowers. He could see Emily’s red bicycle leaning against the porch. Stiles smiled as he unbuckled Zach from his car seat, unable to take his eyes off the place.

The inside was as orderly as a single parent household could ever be. A large corner of the open space main floor was completely taken over by the girls’ stuff—a tiny Fisher Price kitchenette and stacked containers of colorful toys overflowing into the living area, where Anna and Emily immediately ran toward to put on the Disney channel. 

Outside, the sun was setting. Stiles set a sleepy Zachary down on the rich hardwood floors that Derek probably varnished himself or something. He immediately wobbled over to the couch and climbed up to watch the TV with the girls, without a fuss. The equally tired dogs both lied on their sides in front of the couch, allowing the girls to pet their stomachs with their feet.

“How about a drink?” Derek asked him as he watched the kids. Anna and Emily cuddled close, as though they had to make up for their fight with affection.

They went into a shiny modern kitchen and Derek took a bottle of Merlot from a cabinet filled with other bottles of nice wine. Stiles took a seat at one of the barstools, putting his elbows up on the marble island counter, taking in the whole room with a bit of awe.

“This place is kind of a step up from the abandoned subway car, huh?”

Derek rolled his eyes as he handed over the wine glass.  “The economic failure of Beacon Hills happened to provide a lot of areas for squatting. I took advantage.”

“Dad always used to say that Beacon Hills was this, like, American Dream town. Until all the money dried up and the bank closed.”

“I remember what it was like before,” Derek said with his eyes glued to his wine glass. “Everything was built on Hale money, so…” He looked up at Stiles with regret etched in the corners of his mouth. “When they were gone, so was everything else.”

Stiles wanted to change the subject, but Derek did it for him with a sigh of finality and then by swiftly moving to the refrigerator and pulling out ingredients. They assumed the quiet, comfortable rhythm that came along with making dinner together methodically. Talk radio murmured lowly in the background while the pan sizzled, while Derek poured another glass of wine, while Stiles chuckled quietly as Derek cut his finger twice chopping garlic.

They ate with the kids around the dinner table this time, Stiles with Zach in his lap, feeding him cut up spoonful’s of pasta. Anna tried to recite verbatim a funny yogurt commercial she’d seen, but she kept laughing through all her attempts. Then halfway through dinner, Zach full on fell asleep with the plastic spork still clenched in his fist.

“Looks like nap time at Daycare was unsuccessful,” he said, standing up to clear his plate and shift Zach around. “We should probably head home, but—“  He realized in moment of stupidity, that he’d had two glasses of wine, and as the child of the Sheriff, his drinking and driving law was ironclad. “I can’t drive,” he said running his hand through his hair and thinking about how much it would cost to get a taxi all the way out here.

“You can stay over. We’ve got a guest bedroom.” Derek stood as well and started stacking dishes. He said it as if it was nothing major, nothing weird. Sleeping at Derek’s house? Maybe it wasn’t weird. Maybe it didn’t have to be.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

They deposited the dishes into the washer and then deposited Zach into Emily’s room, in an old playpen that Derek was keeping in a storage closet. The girls, in their excitement to have an honest to god sleepover, insisted on going to bed early and sharing Emily’s bed so they could all sleep in the same room. There was a small television mounted to the far wall, and when the girls were dressed in their PJ’s, they turned off the lights and settled into bed with the blue glow of Toy Story 3 filling the room. Stiles watched Derek kiss them and ruffle their hair a bit, tucking them in with the standard “good nights” and “I love yous.” Stiles embraced the painful pang that hit his chest. It meant something to be included in this, to be leaning against the frame of Emily’s green and turquoise colored room, watching over this intimate gesture of tucking children into their beds safe and sound.

He stared at the back of Derek’s head and felt something stir, like it was shaking all his organs and putting them back in the wrong places. It was something life-ruining, probably.

He left to sit in the living room, where the Disney Channel was still playing some new child friendly sitcom with the TV on mute. Stiles felt the lingering effects of the wine drag his eyelids closed, and when they opened next, it was Derek’s face looking down at him, the weight of a hand on his shoulder stirring him awake.  

“You were falling asleep.”

He rubbed a hand over his face and shook himself, blinking at the television which was still on. Derek gave him a weird, half there kind of look and then turned away toward the kitchen. Stiles just listened to the sound of him clearing wine glasses and opening cabinet doors until he could find it in himself to get up and join him.

Derek’s kitchen lights had dimmers that were set to low. It made the room dream-like, as if Stiles was still asleep on the couch.

“Bed’s made in the guest room,” Derek said without looking up from the counter that he was wiping down.

“Great. Thanks, I’ll…” He didn’t know what he would do. “See you in the morning.”

Derek lifted his head, made like he wanted to come toward Stiles, like they weren’t done. Like they hadn’t even started. But he swallowed once, and he looked back down at the perfectly clean countertop, and continued to polish it like it was filthy. “Goodnight, Stiles,” he said.

Stiles pushed the air out through his teeth and drifted out of the kitchen. As he climbed the stairs, he noticed the wall was lined with pictures of the kids. At the top of the stairs, one in particular stood out. It was a picture of Braeden with both girls on her hip, taken maybe a few years ago. Braeden’s hair was greying and the scar on her neck was faded into her skin almost seamlessly. She was smiling with the road behind her, motorcycle parked in the distance. Derek must have taken this. Maybe before they broke up, maybe after. They seemed happy, anyway. And he pictured Derek smiling, holding the camera up and telling the girls to look at him, to say “cheese.”

There was a blank space next the picture. Stiles’ thoughts ran wild for a second and he imagined a picture of Zach hanging there. Maybe a picture of himself, him and Zach, him and the girls. Of all of them.

When he found the spare room, he flicked the light on and saw a cold and neat space with a few boxes of storage pushed in the corner, an immaculately made bed that looked ignored. A few doors down the hall was the place where Derek slept. Stiles took a step back from the guest room, turned out its light, and made his way to Derek’s room instead, half driven by curiosity, half by aimlessness. The heavy door was cracked open so he pushed inside. The first thing he noticed was the unmade bed, a thick white duvet tangled up with the sheets and mismatched pillows, a few of the girls’ stuffed animals on the ground beside a stack of books. The second thing he noticed was that this room smelled just like Derek.

He went inside and closed the door behind him, unzipping his sweater and undoing his belt. Stiles tucked himself into Derek’s bed and tried to breathe through the intense nervousness of being here, in this place he’d never imagined himself in before. Maybe this was a breach of boundaries, or maybe he could blame it on the wine and his terrible tolerance, but he wasn’t going to sleep in the guest room. The thought made him restless. He wanted to be here. So he closed his eyes and waited for the sound of Derek’s footsteps coming up the stairs, and when they did, he took a deep breath and held it.

Derek cracked the door gently open, as if he knew Stiles would be asleep in here. He could probably smell him from downstairs. Not for the first time in his life, Stiles wished he was a werewolf. He wanted to know what his scent mixed up in these sheets was like.

He kept his eyes shut and just listened. He heard Derek sigh softly, then the sound of his clothes hitting the floor as he undressed. He slid into the bed carefully, pulling the sheets higher over them both and turning to face Stiles’ back. He felt the soft warm movement of Derek’s breathe on his neck, and he hoped that his heartbeat wasn’t like a snare drum between them.

Softly, Derek’s legs brushed up against Stiles’. He shifted himself over a bit until there was just a few inches of space between them.

“Sometimes I have nightmares,” he told Derek softly. “Just so you know. In case I wake you.”

“Okay,” Derek whispered.

“Okay.”

Stiles let go of the breath he was holding. He fell asleep not long after that. This time there were no dreams of samurais, or endless manipulative games of backgammon, or the long and twisting hallways of Eichen House.  Instead there were images of Emily’s eyes glowing that pure amber yellow, and the crayon portraits that Zach made coming to life, the sun burning always in the corner of his dream.

***

When Stiles woke, Luna was licking his cheek.

“Blegh,” he pushed the dog’s snout away and blinked up at the white ceiling. Sitting up on his elbows, he looked around and remembered.

There was noise coming from downstairs—the girls, mostly, and under that, the higher pitched sound of Zachary babbling. Stiles looked at the empty space beside him where Derek had slept, running his hands over Luna head as she nestled into Stiles’ lap. He contemplated just lying there with the dog and having an existential crisis, but she kept wagging her tail and looking up at him expectantly, like she wanted him to go downstairs.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m up,” he told her. She jumped from the bed as he stirred.

As he was doing up yesterday’s jeans, he heard Anna and Emily storm up the stairs and pad down the hall. The door was open and they stopped in their tracks when they saw him, both still adorning pyjamas and slippers.

“Did you and Daddy have a sleepover too?” Anna asked with the most clichéd innocence.

“Uh.” He panicked for half a second. Technically, it really was just a sleepover, as innocent as Anna could imagine, so he really didn’t have anything to be worried about, but he drew a blank in trying to create a child-friendly summary of adult intimacy and sexual tension. As a last ditch effort, he bent down and picked up Luna, who started to kiss his face and squirm in excitement. “We had a slumber party with the dogs.”

“Awww, no fair,” Anna said, and she stormed away toward the bathroom sighing.

Emily was left standing there, somehow incredibly intimidating in her Minions pyjama pants. She looked at Stiles like she called bullshit on the whole thing and told him, “The puppies aren’t allowed to sleep in our rooms.” And then she followed her sister to go brush her teeth.

He set Luna back down and she took off down the stairs. As he followed her, he heard the deep tone of Derek’s voice mixing with Zach’s, and the sound of something sizzling on the stove in the kitchen.

He found them there. Derek was holding Zach. He had him propped on his hip, leaning against a counter in a pair of sweats and a tank top. He held a bowl of pancake batter up to Zach who was clutching an oversized whisk, listening intently to Derek’s instructions to stir slowly, his tongue hanging adorably out of his mouth in concentration. Stiles’ entire chest went hot as he watched them.

“Daddy I make cakes!” Zach yelled when he saw Stiles standing at the doorway. He threw both his arms up, sending pancake batter flying onto the cabinets behind him.

Derek chuckled and told him he did great, and set him down before he could destroy the kitchen any more. Stiles ruffled his hair as he passed by, waddling out to the living room to chase Luna.

Then Stiles took a few steps toward Derek, reached out to wipe a bit of pancake batter from his shoulder, and without even thinking about it, he kissed him.

It wasn’t fire and passion. He only let himself linger on Derek’s warm mouth for a second or two, acutely aware of the fact that the house was full of kids and dogs and activity, and acutely aware of the fact that he was Stiles and this was Derek, and they weren’t in Beacon Hills, and they probably weren’t even supposed to be in the same room at this very moment. Random fucking coincidents and chance encounters aside, Stiles wasn’t sure if this was on the table, if Derek was someone who wanted to be kissed by anyone, let alone him. So he pulled away quickly, and was too scared to look at Derek’s shocked face.

When he turned away, muttering “shit, I’m sorry,” he meant to go get Zach and his things, and to leave before making it worse, but that didn’t happen. Derek grabbed him by the wrist and turned him back with a little bit of force. He looked kind of angry, which was the worst possible thing he could be, but Stiles watched his eyebrows make a ridiculous transition, and then his face was suddenly open. Vulnerable was the word, maybe. He looked like he was going to say something, but in typical Derek fashion he didn’t use his words. He surged forward and dragged Stiles’ face back to where their mouths could fit together.

Stiles pushed forward to meet him and something settled deep in his stomach, lifting the anxiety and replacing it with embarrassing fucking butterflies and warmth. He wanted to smile into Derek’s mouth, but Derek’s hands were suddenly locked around his waist, pulling him closer.

It went on as Stiles backed him into the counter, chasing Derek’s every movement, sliding his tongue in and tasting toothpaste and maple syrup. It was slow, a soft drag of wet lips and a teeth and small gasps that kept pulling him deeper and closer to Derek’s entire body. He kissed like they were about to fuck for hours, like they were in a dark corner of some club, like he was about to whisper something filthy and perfect in Stiles’ ear. He almost forgot they were in a messy kitchen in sweatpants and day-old jeans, with the distant sound of cartoons as the soundtrack. When his hips started to line up with Derek’s, after almost a minute, Derek pulled away on a sharp inhale and looked at Stiles. He felt like a mess, like he’d been shaken upside down and couldn’t catch his breath, or see anything except the inviting redness of Derek’s lips.

They stared at each other, breathing, feeling how close Stiles was to grinding him into the counter like they were teenagers. Derek actually bit his lip and looked down at Stiles’ with something like longing, and then suddenly in a flurry of motion he slipped out and away from Stiles’ personal space and quickly moved to the sink. About two seconds later, Anna and Emily ran past the kitchen.

Stiles heaved a huge sigh of relief when they were gone. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

Derek started doing the goddamn dishes, back turned and intently ignoring the entire situation, like he hadn’t been getting hard in his sweatpants thirty seconds ago.

“Hey,” Stiles said with a bit of sharpness. “Can you look at me?”

Derek’s hands paused in the soapy water. He shut off the tap and turned around, looking at Stiles like he was obeying an order and not impressed by it. Stiles got into his space and checked that the coast was clear of kids. He heard them all in the other room loudly going on about the Lego tower they’d started the night before. He took Derek’s wet soapy hand and held it tight.

“We have to talk about that.”

“What do you want to talk about, Stiles?” He sounded harsh, but if experience had taught him anything, it was that Derek Hale was only a dick when he was feeling emotions.

“I just—“ He stopped to take a breath, for bravery, and because this morning so far had him feeling lightheaded. “Don’t make me say it.”

“Say what?”

“You know… _what are we?”_ He rolled his eyes at the phrase.  

Derek looked at the floor and then back at him. “I don’t know.”

“Are we people who sometimes make out when their kids have playdates? Secretly fucking in the back of our minivans outside of little league?”

“That’s not what I—“ Derek started, but he seemed frustrated, and looked out the kitchen window.

Stiles softly, very softly, slid his hand to the back of Derek’s neck and applied gentle pressure. Derek’s body sagged forward, like he had no energy at all, like all he wanted was to be back in Stiles’ space. He kissed him again, more tame this time, but sweet and honest. Stiles pulled him back into that hug that he’d gotten so used to and he rested his lips against Derek’s neck.

“I like being here, that’s all,” Stiles said.

“I like you here.”

He could have stayed like that until his knees gave out, holding each other up, trading soft, well needed kisses, but they had babies. Emily called for more pancakes from the living room and Stiles heard Zach’s wobbly gait coming toward the kitchen. They broke apart slower this time, just as Zach entered. He held up an empty sippy cup, expecting more apple juice. Stiles tried to take it from him and refill it, but Zack defiantly shook his head.

He asked for Derek to do it.


End file.
